CELEBRATING THIRTY YEARS OF AGING
AND HEALTH 2012 ANNUAL REPORT
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INNOVATIVE MODELS OF CARE

1983

Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute

2006-present Many older adults receive care from home health aides, personal care aides, and certified nursing aides. There are about 3.2 million of these direct-care workers, a number expected to jump to five million by 2020. These workers receive low wages and often lack health insurance, yet they provide essential services to older adults and people with disabilities.

The Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI) (www.phinational.org) was founded in 1991 with the goal of improving the lives of people who need home and residential care and the lives of the workers who provide that care.

In 2006, with funding from the Hartford Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies, PHI launched the Center for Coaching Supervision and Leadership (CCSL). The CCSL provides training to nursing homes and home health agencies across the country to help them build well-functioning organizations, reducing staff turnover and improving the quality of care.

When PHI surveyed supervisors of nursing homes and home health agencies who received training at the CCSL they found that one year later 77 percent of them reported they often or always use the skills they learned.

(Top) A home health aide with Independence Care System, an organization affiliated with the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, assists a client.



(Below) PHI conducts training programs for nursing assistants, home health aides, and personal assistants.
Creating a better job for direct care workers will create better care for the older adults they serve.” Jodi M. Sturgeon
President
Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute
The communication and problem-solving skills that are central to the work of home health aides, who go into the homes of strangers and must negotiate the needs of clients and family members, are the same skills that everyone within a caregiving organization needs.” Steven L. Dawson
Founder
Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute

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